Tibetan and Himalayan Library - THL

Life in the SeraSe ra Hermitages

By 1959, almost all of SeraSe ra’s hermitages had been ritual institutions for close to
two-hundred years. If a monk who had entered a hermitage wanted to study, he would go
to SeraSe ra. If he wanted to do life-long, isolated meditation retreat, he would
seek a truly secluded place in the mountains. By the same token, if a SeraSe ra monk
did not want to study, and if he was content to lead the life of
a ritualist, he could enter a hermitage (if permitted by his regional house and
accepted by the hermitage). Of course, a monk who wanted to lead the life of a
ritualist could remain at SeraSe ra, but life in a hermitage was often much easier than
life in a seat of learning,
especially if the hermitage was the seat of a high lamabla ma who was wealthy. Be that as it may, those monks who
entered the hermitages knew the type of life they would be living. They would either
be engaged in ritual (especially if they had a good voice or knew how to play a
musical instrument), or they would serve as support staff for the hermitage:
cleaning, tending altars, cooking, doing business on the hermitage’s behalf, or
supervising one of its estates.

To become an official monk or nun in one of the hermitages the postulant would have
to submit to an examination (gyukrgyugs). By the time monks and nuns
were senior members of the institution, they would have memorized close to
five-hundred pages of ritual texts.33 Monks and nuns performed the rituals
of the hermitage in monthly and yearly ritual cycles in accordance with the
institution’s liturgical calendar. If no sponsor was available, the fixed rituals
would be “paid for” by the hermitage itself. That is, the monastery would provide the
monks and nuns with food (often better than the day-to-day fare) for the duration of
the ritual cycle. But local lay people, monks from other monasteries, and the
Tibetan government often
commissioned rituals – sometimes acting as sponsors for one of the monastery’s own
fixed ritual cycles, sometimes requesting the hermitage to perform special rituals on
one of its free days. There were, of course, plenty of lay people in the
LhasaLha sa
Valley and its suburbs who needed such rituals (zhaptenzhabs
brtan) to be performed on their behalf. On occasion, a small group of monks
or nuns from the hermitage might also be invited to a lay person’s home to do ritual there. Rituals have always
been an important source of income for the hermitages and for their individual monks
and nuns.

While there is some variation in the monthly and yearly liturgical cycles of the
hermitages, there is also a great deal of overlap. Almost all of the hermitages, for
example, celebrate the new and full moon days,34 as well as the tenth and twenty-fifth of the lunar month. Some
of them also perform protector deity practices on an additional day every month.

There is also a great deal of similarity in the yearly ritual
cycle. Monks and nuns perform quite extensive multiple-day ritual cycles during the
New Year (LosarLo gsar), and
during the “Sixth-Month
Fourth-Day” (Drukpa TsezhiDrug pa tshe bzhi) celebrations. This latter holiday, also
called “Festival of the Turning
of the Wheel of the Doctrine” (Chönkhor DüchenChos ’khor dus chen), is a major pilgrimage
day for Tibetans from LhasaLha sa and surrounding
areas, as thousands of people travel along a route in the foothills above SeraSe ra from
Pabongkha
Hermitage in the west to PurchokPhur lcog in the east. A good deal
of the hermitages’ income for the year derives from the moneys and in-kind goods
collected in the form of offerings on this day (at least if the hermitage is
fortunate enough to lie on the pilgrimage circuit). At different times of the year
(in the first fortnight of the fourth Tibetan month, for example) the hermitages also perform two-day
Avalokiteśvara fasting ritual
(nyungnésmyung gnas) –
often doing multiple sets of two-day rituals consecutively.35 The hermitages also, of course, celebrate other major pan-sectarian holidays,
like the Buddha’s birth/death date, as well as GelukDge lugs-specific holy days like the commemoration
of TsongkhapaTsong kha pa’s death – the
Ganden Feast of the 25th (Ganden NgamchöDga’ ldan lnga mchod) – that takes place on
the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth Tibetan month. All of the hermitages, it seems, also maintained the “rainy-season retreat” (yarnédbyar gnas) tradition, during which
monks and nuns minimize their movement for a portion of the summer so as to avoid
killing insects that are more prevalent on the ground during this time.

Detail of a tangkathang
ka of Nyang bran rgyal chen preserved in one of the regional houses of SeraSe ra,
India.

Of course, each hermitage has its own set of tutelary deities (yidamyi
dam) and protector
deities (sungmasrung ma, chökyongchos skyong), and so the rites
performed by the monks and nuns may vary from one monastery to the next. But given
that all of them are GelukDge lugs institutions, there is also a great deal of overlap in the deities
propitiated, and in the actual liturgies performed. Hence, for example, many of the
monasteries perform the self-generation (dakkyébdag bskyed) and self-initiation (danjukbdag ’jug) rituals of Vajrabhairava, and they propitiate
protector deities like Penden LhamoDpal ldan lha mo, Mahākāla (GönpoMgon po), Dharmarāja (ChögyelChos rgyal), and Vaiśravana (NamséRnam sras). In some
monasteries, especially in the hermitages to the west of SeraSe ra, the protector
Nyangdren GyelchenNyang bran rgyal chen, the local site-protector of the
NyangdrenNyang bran
Valley, is also propitiated. The rites written by Pabongkha Dechen NyingpoPha bong kha bde chen snying po (1878-1941) continue to be as popular today as
they were before 1959.

As an example, here are the principal ritual practices done at one of the
hermitages, Garu
Nunnery, in a one-month period (the dates given are the dates in the
Tibetan lunar month):

In addition to performing rituals, the monks of the male hermitages have
traditionally seen it as part of their duties to keep a number of rooms open for
visiting SeraSe ra monks. Textualists or pechawadpe cha ba from SeraSe ra’s two philosophical colleges –
JéByes and MéSmad – had a number of study breaks between the different
study periods,42 and they would often
seek the relative peace and quiet of the hermitages, usually not
for meditation, but for intensive memorization retreats. This tradition still exists,
although today the monks tend to request rooms in the hermitages owned by (and
closest to) SeraSe ra rather than seeking rooms in privately-held hermitages like PurchokPhur lcog. Sera UtséSe ra dbu rtse, Sera ChödingSe ra chos sdings, and RakhadrakRa kha brag have always been especially popular with SeraSe ra monks who want to do
such retreats not only because of their proximity to SeraSe ra, but also because of
the strong associations of these three hermitages with events in the life of
TsongkhapaTsong kha pa.

A SeraSe ra monk who in 2004 was engaged in a textual retreat (petsamdpe mtshams) at Rakhadrak Hermitage. He is
occupying a room adjacent to the cave of TsongkhapaTsong kha pa.

As with many monasteries in Tibet
today, the population of the SeraSe ra hermitages is quite young. The vast majority
of the monks and nuns are under the age of thirty, and many are much younger. While
the nunneries appear to be thriving, the fate of the male hermitages is not as clear.
In pre-1959 Tibet, there were
basically only two career options available to young men and women: they either
became monks and nuns, or they chose a family life. If they chose the latter and they
entered the workforce, they usually followed in the footsteps of their parents, who
were either farmers (zhingpazhing pa), nomads (drokpa’brog pa),43 or, less
frequently, merchants (tsongpatshong pa). The life of the
farmer and nomad was a difficult life. By comparison, the monastic life was more
secure, and it provided opportunities for education – and therefore for social and
economic advancement – that were not normally available to ordinary villagers and
nomads.

Today the situation is quite different. Young men and women have (at least in
theory) more choices open to them. Secular education (almost exclusively in the
medium of Chinese language) is now a
possibility, even if it is still mostly accessible only to the middle and upper
classes in urban areas. And there are a variety of career options that were not
available before 1959 (mostly for those who are educated and who live in, or who
relocate to, larger urban areas). How much opportunity actually
exists for Tibetan youths – as
important as this question is – is not really the issue we are concerned with here.
Rather, what is most important for us as we contemplate the future of institutions
like the hermitages is the perception that exists in the minds
of young Tibetans about their possible
future. In their minds, driven in large part by the visions they
absorb from television and films, the world is filled with opportunities,
life-choices and lifestyles that compete with the monastic life. But Tibetans are an extremely devout people, and
monks and nuns continue to enter the monasteries and nunneries, often with a great
sense of religious calling, and with an idealistic vision of what it will be like to
live in such an institution. This influx of young Tibetans into small monasteries like the hermitages is not something
that one sees changing anytime in the near future. What is
changing is what happens after young people (and especially
young men) enter monasteries. And here the pattern seems to be that most of the young
monks leave the monastery before they are twenty years of age. The problem for the
hermitages, then, is not one of recruitment but of retention.44 At least this is the problem in smaller monasteries,
and especially in smaller monasteries near a large cosmopolitan area like LhasaLha sa, where, because
of its physical proximity, the secular and modern life entices young monks with even
greater force.45

An elder monk from one of the hermitages complained to me, for example, that he had
“lost” many young boys in their late teens, and that he was considering not accepting
boys any longer, his theory being that if one holds out for more mature young men in
their twenties (preferably already ordained), one is more apt to get candidates who
already know what is in store for them, and who will not be so easily enticed by the
lures of the world. It remains to be seen, however, how many monks there are who fit
this description and are not already committed to another monastic institution. Or,
if such individuals do exist, it remains to be seen how many of them see themselves
living out their lives in a relatively isolated, small, ritual monastery. If it is
impossible to lure such monks to the hermitages, then the administrators of these
institutions may have to resign themselves to the fact that their monasteries will
be, for all intents and purposes, something akin to religious boarding schools for
young men, the majority of whom will most likely leave once they reach their
twenties. But even if they leave, perhaps these young men will return to the
hermitages at the end of their life, to live out their final years in a religious
setting, a pattern that we have seen in other Tibetan contexts.46 Be that as it may, one thing is clear: life in the
hermitages is different from what it was before 1959, and the problems that
hermitages face today are as much due to global and market forces as they are to
Chinese Communist ideology and
bureaucratic regulation.

[39] This is according to the oral account. Gar lo, 25, states
that the protector deity practices take place on the twenty-ninth.

[40] Gar lo,
25, mentions only the second of these
practices – which is there called Naro Kachömé DanjukNa ro mkha’ spyod ma’i bdag ’jug – and it omits Demchok LachöBde mchog bla mchod.

[41] Gar lo,
25, calls this by the alternative name
of Neten ChakchöGnas brtan phyag mchod.

[42] Whether or not all of these were considered official “textual retreats” (petsamdpe mtshams) or “doctrine retreats” (chötsamchos mtshams), by my
reckoning, monks had the opportunity for such kinds of memorization retreats on
six separate occasions that correspond to the following dates (all according to
the Tibetan calendar): 2/17-2/26.
4/8-4/15, 5/2-5/25, 8/1-8/8, 9/7-9/16, 10/17-11/15.

[44] The situation at
SeraSe ra is somewhat different. While there is undoubtedly attrition, it does
not appear to be as high as it is in the hermitages. For one thing, SeraSe ra
monks tend to enter the monastery at a slightly older age. There is also a long
waiting list to become an official SeraSe ra monk, and someone who has attained
this status is not likely to give it up casually. Monks who are studying at
SeraSe ra also have a clear-cut goal (that of receiving a classical religious
education), a goal that has an end-point, and that culminates in a socially
prestigious degree – that of geshédge bshes.

[45] It should be noted that this is not only a problem for
monasteries in Tibet. By some estimates about twenty percent of the monks of
SeraSe ra-India are presently residing
(mostly as illegal aliens) in the U.S. (principally in New York City), working
menial jobs, and living “the American dream.” Anecdotally, I have heard that some
of these monks are now beginning to return to SeraSe ra-India, and to
their former lives as monks. This phenomenon deserves to be studied from a
socio-ethnographic viewpoint. For an account of similar decisions faced by
Tibetan Buddhist nuns in Nepal,
see Alyson Prude’s forthcoming Masters thesis (UCSB).

[46] In SeraSe ra-India, there are several cases of
former SeraSe ra monks returning to retire to the monastery. See also the essay on
ChupzangChu bzang, an institution that before 1959 appears to have been a community of
elderly LhasaLha saTibetans engaged in intensive
religious practice.